What if 1 million families enjoyed meals together?

Whatever you call it, for many American families the simple act of a family meal has become rocket science.

Busy schedules often pre-empt the treasured ritual of sitting around a table and sharing a meal and conversation. And even when the stars and BlackBerry phones align, families too often spend mealtime with their faces buried in their plates, making eye contact only with the meatloaf. Or watching Katie Couric. Or enjoying LOL conversations with their texting buddies.

Somehow, something got botched up. Too many parents sit across from their kids and realize they're breaking bread with strangers.

Still, Union Park Middle School Principal Kris Viles staked her hopes on improving her school by making mealtime more meaningful.

Parental involvement at her school wasn't cutting it. Not that Viles was tone deaf to economic realities.

She understood many parents at the east Orange County school — where 82 percent of students rely on the free and reduced-price lunch program — were no-shows at school functions because of work.

Viles also knew parental involvement pays off in higher grades and test scores, better attendance, better behavior and, down the line, college or vocational schools.

So she eagerly embraced School House to Your House, a fledgling program that enhances parent-school communication by fostering meaningful conversation between students and their parents.

It does that through paper placemats that students take home each week. They feature conversation starters with themes students discuss in the classroom. Like positive attitude, endurance and patriotism. Families jot down their thoughts or draw pictures on the placemat in response to the prompts. Students are encouraged to bring the placemats back to school.

Union Park was the first on the block in Orange County to give the program — hatched in Miami-Dade County schools — a whirl.

Viles persuaded teachers to talk up the program to students. She sent home fliers, and she left parents robo-call messages announcing what was coming in January.

"I thought if I couldn't get parents to come to school as much as I would like, I could take a tool to them to increase communication between them and the student, and open up communication with the community," Viles said.

Union Park kicked off things in January. Once students got past the corniness, something happened. Something unfamiliar. Chatter ensued. The face-to-face kind. Between parents and kids.

E-mails landed in Viles' mailbox from thunderstruck parents. Their kids, they discovered after lobbing the conversation-starters, did indeed possess the power of speech.

And … they liked it. Chatting with their parents, that is.

So much so that the notion of spreading the word about the rewards of family dinners rose among the student body from a whisper to a scream.

What if 1 million families took time to enjoy a family meal?

Viles was listening. And she found willing conspirators in Neal and Jill Kimball, the creators of School House to Your House, a spinoff of Family Table Time. They developed the game board-like tablecloth concept in 1999, and it caught the eye of then-Gov. Jeb Bush.

The Kimballs gave Union Park students a website for the campaign: OneMillionFamilyDinners.com. Families can share a meal and then share their experiences online.

"This is such a societal thing, and we need to be obedient and deliberate with having meals together because of our schedules," Neal said.

It's an aha! moment that Jill often points to: You've worked hard to put food on the table, but is your family sitting around it?

For families who aren't at the table, societal ills such as poor grades, promiscuity and drug abuse may lie in wait for children missing that critical connection.

"We think the [Union Park] children are on to something," Neal said.

"We think this will create a brushfire of families eating dinner together, and we'll have smarter students, fill less jail cells. The bad things will go down, and the good things will go up."